


AU #2

by project_break



Series: In Another Universe [3]
Category: U-KISS
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 10:36:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/project_break/pseuds/project_break
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eli and Kevin are in the same year at a ritzy New England boarding school. Eli works hard in class to get good grades to make his parents proud, and he acts hard after class to win the popularity contests. Kevin is an immediate and obvious choice for a victim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	AU #2

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning: bullying, brief sexual assault, homophobia

In another life, it hurts even more. 

Eli and Kevin are in the same year at a ritzy New England boarding school. Eli is a scholarship student while Kevin's parents could have paid his way thrice over without noticing it. 

Eli works hard in class and studying Mandarin to get good grades to make his parents proud, and he acts hard after class to win the popularity contests, to pre-emptively stop the bullying a poor scholarship student would seem destined to receive.

Kevin is an immediate and obvious choice for a victim: he's thin, delicate, effeminate, quiet, and too bright to stay under the instructors' radar. A gay, girly, teacher's pet; bullying was designed with kids like him in mind. 

Eli tortures Kevin in all the required ways as outlined in the invisible but well-read pages of the universal guide to teenage bullying: he body-checks him during flag football and sends him careening to the ground, then he steals his clothes out of his gym locker and throws them in the river; he knocks his tray into his face in the cafeteria, or steals his food and walks away with it; he and his friends write witty things like "cocksucker," "faggot," and "gaylord" on his locker, desk, (and one memorable time, his school tie) in permanent marker with illustrative diagrams included; he steals his laptop and only gives it back after Kevin, in tears, tells him the passwords to his computer and his Facebook account and Eli changes his status to "I really want Headmaster Doolittle's hard cock up my ass" and then changes his password to delay him long enough in getting rid of it that his entire ( _very_ religious) family sees. 

It's not until second year, when Kevin gets a new roommate, that things start to change. AJ is a third year and an army brat, a scholarship student who transferred in so that he could have a solid high school resume to get him into the Ivy League university he's had his eye on since he was eight. He's a little shorter than Eli, with dark hair, scary eyes, and a sharp tongue, and he's clearly head-over-heels in love with Kevin. 

It's really fucking annoying. 

AJ acts like Kevin's personal bodyguard or something, only gayer. He waits for him after his last class before lunch so they can eat together, he holds his tray for him and consults with him over the varying merits of different kinds of bland sandwiches, he walks him back to the dorms after classes get out for the day, and he goes with him to the movies sometimes on Fridays and church on Sundays. Eli would normally bully him, too, for being such an obvious fag, but AJ scares the shit out of him, quite frankly. Eli might be better built, but AJ's got this look about him like he's killed men and Eli's not stupid enough to fight him head on. 

Some things never change, though: for some reason Kevin never tells AJ about what Eli's been doing to him, even though it doesn't stop when AJ arrives, it just gets confined to the now fewer places where AJ doesn't go, and in ways he'll never see or hear about. Eli wouldn't blame him if he said something -- he knows full well how horrible he's being, and Kevin would honestly do well to be retroactively defended by a close friend -- but AJ never comes stalking toward him like a large, violent bird of prey, so Eli has to believe Kevin hasn't said a word. 

He asks him about it, once, kind of: "Why the fuck don't you go cry about it to your boyfriend?" he sneers as Kevin wipes his eyes on the back of his hands after Eli's finished (for the time being) telling him what a worthless, snivelling, ugly little entitled faggot he is and how his god hates him. 

"AJ's got a lot to think about besides me," Kevin said softly, voice hitching in a way that Eli was now intimately familiar with. "I don't want him to worry." 

Eli subsequently thwarts that desire by telling AJ everything that Kevin's kept from him the next day. AJ walks away from him calmly in the cafeteria and gently takes Kevin by the arm and leads him out the door. Later, as Eli's walking back to the dorms after a late-night smoke in the woods, someone leaps out at him, tackles him to the ground and beats him unconscious. 

When he gets out of the hospital and comes back into school a week later, covered with bruises, AJ waves at him sarcastically with a hand which is covered in healing tears. A hand the same size as the bruises on Eli's face and ribs. 

Eli jumps right back on the bullying-Kevin bandwagon, unwilling to let two years of hard work to stay on top of the social pile be undone by AJ and his cowardly backhanded attack. But Kevin isn't as easy anymore. Eli does what he's always done, but Kevin doesn't cry anymore. He doesn't react. It's like AJ took all of Eli's power over him. Eli's angry, he's jealous. He figures out how to get back at both of them. 

On the last night of the school year, at the closing bonfire, Eli grabs Kevin roughly by the shoulder and spins him around from AJ's side, then kisses him, rough and punishing, in front of the whole student body, his hand pushing down Kevin's body to grope and invade. Kevin struggles and Eli bites his lip, grabs a hold of one of his wrists and squeezes so tight that he can feel the bones grind. 

AJ comes out of nowhere, so fast and so hard, just like Eli wanted. He grabs Eli's hair and yanks his head back, hard enough to make his eyes water and his grip on Kevin falter. He peels Eli off of Kevin and then shoves him back so hard that Eli trips and very nearly falls into the fire. AJ's still coming after him even after two male teachers have grabbed him and are trying to physically restrain him. 

Eli barks out a laugh and looks at Kevin, standing shocked and teary-eyed and scared once again, and yells at him: "Liked that, didn't you, fag? Got a hard on! I felt it! Don't deny it!"

AJ gets suspended for a week, to be served upon the beginning of the new school year. Kevin gets to see a psychiatrist. Eli gets expelled. 

AJ graduates with honours and goes to Columbia, just like he'd always planned. Kevin graduates and goes to NYU to studying writing. Eli quits school and moves to China to become an actor. 

AJ and Kevin move in together after university. AJ is a highly sought-after criminal psychologist and Kevin writes books for teenagers who have been bullied. He does tours of high schools across the country. 

Eli makes it into a Chinese movie which does well-enough to open in the US. He goes to New York for the premiere and catches sight of Kevin signing copies of his book in a Barnes and Noble. He doesn't say anything. He buys the book, skips the autograph line, and goes back to his hotel. 

He reads the book in one night, and then, for the first time in ten years, he cries. 

He brings the book to the Salvation Army and leaves the country. He never sees Kevin again. 

 

_Eli is 14 and the other, richer kids keep looking at him alternatively like he's meat or dog shit. Only Kevin has said a kind word to him._

_Eli loves him. He did from the moment he walked into their shared room and saw him carefully putting his clothes on hangers in his side of the closet. He loves sleeping in the same room as him, hearing him breathe. He loves wrestling with him and hearing him laugh. He kissed him once, on a stupid impulse, and Kevin very carefully kissed him back._

_Eli loves him, but he has to defend himself and Kevin is demonstrably the weakest link._

_He cries the night before he does it, and Kevin -- sweet Kevin, who has no idea, who doesn't understand -- hugs him and kisses him and promises him that everything will be alright._

_Eli cries, and the next day he tortures him._


End file.
